Jordan took charge of the grill that day, as promised, with Desmond standing nearby, not hovering, but available, the way a coach stands near a young player trying a new position, ready to help but willing to let him learn. Jordan turned the burgers with a long spatula, checked the heat, called out when a batch was ready, and the parents, who had watched Jordan grow from a boy at the cooler to a young man at the grill, smiled at the sight, because a boy becoming a man in front of his team is a thing worth watching. Desmond, watching his son, thought about his own father, who had taught him to grill, and about how grilling, like teaching, is passed down not through lectures but through standing beside someone at a hot grill and learning when to turn and when to wait. Nia handed out drinks, as promised, with her mother's neatness and her father's calm, and she greeted each family by name, because she had learned the names of the team families over the season, and because greeting people by name is a small act of belonging. A little girl spilled juice on the concrete, and Nia was there with paper towels before anyone made a fuss, and an older boy tried to take two cans at once, and Nia told him, firmly and kindly, that one was enough for now, and he believed her, because Nia said things as if they were already decided. Leon Branson told a story about his own childhood team, and Pearl Branson showed photographs of the season, and the speaker played music low enough to talk over, old songs and new ones, because Jordan had made the playlist and Nia had vetoed half of it, as before, and the pavilion sounded, once again, like what it was, a place where people were glad to be together.
Hattie Adeyemi arrived at half past ten, with her pie covered in foil and her folding chair, and she set her chair in the shade at the edge of the pavilion, where she could see the grill and the tables and the path to the playground all at once, and she accepted a cup of lemonade from Nia with the gravity of a woman receiving a formal honor. Desmond came over to thank her, and she waved him off and told him to get back to the grill before the burgers burned, and he laughed, because Hattie Adeyemi was not a woman you argued with about burgers, and because her words, repeated from the first cookout, were a kind of continuity, a proof that some things, even after trouble, remain the same. She sat and watched the team, and she talked to parents, and she told a story about the pavilion in its early years, and the parents listened, because Hattie's stories were a neighborhood's memory, and because listening to them was a way of belonging to the neighborhood. At noon, when the burgers were ready and the tables were full, Hattie uncovered her pie and set it on the dessert table, and the pie, golden and fragrant, became, as pies do at cookouts, a centerpiece, not because it was grand but because it was homemade, and homemade things, at a team gathering, carry a meaning that store-bought things do not. They say, I took time for you. They say, you matter enough for me to bake. Hattie, watching people take slices, nodded with satisfaction, because a pie eaten by a team is a pie that has done its job.